Entangled whale have been seen in swatch of no ground

By | Muntasir Mamun Imran, Country Coordinator, International Coastal Cleanup, The Ocean Conservancy

Whale! Whale!! Whale? In Bangladesh? No way!! No one can even imagine the existence of whale in Bay of Bengal is a small corridor of the mighty Indian Ocean, but due to the favorable geographical location it’s not impossible to find whales and other species of dolphins here. Though river system of Bangladesh has been a source of the Ganges dolphins since long time, but whale is still a fairly new mammal to enrich territorial faunal beauty.

A recent trip to Swatch of no ground (SONG) which is geographically located in the Bay of Bengal, organized by Bangladesh Tourism Expansion Forum, they found a number of whales and dolphins in that particular area. From the south western coastal belt of Bangladesh, Kuakata, SONG is nearly 100 km apart from the ground in farther more SW in direction.

It’s impossible to say the accurate number of whales living in the area due to lack of proper survey. During their trip, they have found a whale having a latch of fishing net on its tail fins. It had cuts from the both side of her tail and it is cutting deep into its flesh.

According to the photo(s), it is not difficult to say that within a very short period of time that fishing line will cut off the tail fin of the whale!! As it seems, over fishing and less carelessness among the fishermen should be charged for this situation. Fishing nets are the

silent assassin for these lovely creatures of the ocean. The types of fishing nets are used in this territory are largely responsible death of turtles, dolphins and other fisheries. No basic conservational education has been provided to them yet and no proper action has been taken for any death of dolphins, turtles or any other aquatic animals.

The Bengal Fan, the largest submarine fan in the world, is the characteristic feature of the Bay of Bengal.  With a width of about 1000 km, it extends to a length of 3000 km, accommodating sediments whose thickness reaches more than 16 km at the proximal region of the Bengal delta.  The sediments decrease in thickness uniformly towards the south up to lat. 7°40′S, where they abut exposed basement topography. Submarine canyons and a network of levee channels act as conduits to carry sediments from the Bangladesh shelf to regions of distal Bengal Fan. These channels change their configuration from time to time due to sea-level fluctuations, migration of turbidity channels and their orientation, and input of the sediments. According to experts, such migration of channels occurred during the Pliocene–Pleistocene period.

The largest submarine canyon on the Bangladesh shelf, known as Swatch-of-No-Ground, is the most conspicuous physiographic feature in northern Bay of Bengal. The canyon deeply incised into the Bangladesh shelf, connects the active channel–levee system network in the Bengal Fan and its distal area. It is believed that the canyon had formed about 125,000 years ago (Curray, J. R., Emmel, F. J. and Moore, D. G., The Bengal Fan: Morphology, geometry, stratigraphy, history and processes. Mar. Pet. Geol., 2003, 19, 1191–1223.).

So far, presence of Bryde’s whale in SONG is proved that this entire area is tropical and specially because this type of whales prefer highly production tropical, sub tropical and warm temperature water where temp ranges from 16 – 21 degree centigrade (wiki). This species shows migratory behavior, it moves towards higher latitudes during the summer and towards the equator during winter.

It’s an appeal to everyone to save this magnificent creation of the sea. It’s just a matter of time to see this whale when its find its death on the banks of the Ganges. The net entangled with its fin is supposed to be huge and very heavy, containing number of buoyancies, which made the wounded whale less active. With this heavy net it’s nearly impossible to dive and move around for food. It was swimming around us very slowly, just like floating beside the boat – one of the witness exclaimed.

Still it’s not impossible to save this whale; since the territory is well marked and small. We need a cumulative action now to save the life of wounded whale of swatch of no ground. Please help us.

Coverage of this article at:

Reuters AlerNet

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/29542/c84edbfd967d81f6b5f8b9429da0ccbc.htm

Global Voice

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/03/04/bangladesh-save-the-wounded-whale/

IndiaTimes:

http://oneclick.indiatimes.com/article/004fbZa3Uw3nT?q=Bangladesh